This is not an Onion article and this is not April Fools. Kristi Noem banned drag shows. Her husband was just busted wearing fake breasts and pink spandex in photos sent to fetish models, and he paid them $25,000. An Undocumented Immigrant may have been the one who exposed him.
Kristi Noem, the woman Trump put in charge of the Department of Homeland Security, the woman who oversaw ICE raids that killed two American citizens in Minneapolis, the woman who tried to ban campus drag shows and signed laws that LGBTQ advocates said sanctioned discrimination, has a husband who was secretly dressing up in oversized fake breasts, pink bike shorts, and tight Lululemon tops while chatting with online "bimbofication" fetish models.
Bryon Noem used the alias "Jason Jackson." He was found out when one of the women accidentally pocket-dialed him. She heard a voicemail: "Noem Insurance, leave a message." She Googled the business. She found Kristi Noem.
This was not the FBI, this was not a background check, this was not some thorough vetting process for the spouse of a Cabinet secretary (who has access to the nation's most sensitive security apparatus). No, this came from a pocket dial and a google search.
He paid the women at least $25,000 through PayPal and Cash App. He didn't deny the photos when the Daily Mail reached him. Kristi Noem's spokesperson said she was "devastated" and "blindsided."
And here's where it becomes more than just a tabloid story.
A former CIA officer told the Daily Mail that if a media organization could find this information, a hostile intelligence service almost certainly could too. Megyn Kelly said on her show that if this had been known, Noem "never would have been confirmed for that post." The woman in charge of America's homeland security was married to a walking blackmail target and nobody caught it.
An Axios reporter said the original tip about Bryon Noem came from an immigrant sex worker who was possibly undocumented and "wanted to go public about Noem's husband using her services online — it was vengeance for DHS's immigration enforcement."
The woman whose husband deported people for a living may have been brought down by the very community she targeted. The administration that launched a war on trans people was housing a secret cross-dresser at the top of the chain. The party that screams about family values had a Cabinet spouse paying $25,000 to fetish models while posing in J-cup fake breasts.
There's nothing wrong with what Bryon Noem does in his private life. But there's everything wrong with profiting politically from persecuting people who do the same thing openly and honestly.